This study is about a history textbook which introduces the new transnational masternarrative of Holocaust memory into the classrooms of the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The script of the book entails a replacement of the formerly dominant view of Switzerland as a neutral nation resisting evil in favour of an image that aligns Switzerland with other nations that accept the Holocaust as part of their national history, and combine their efforts to prevent such crimes in the future. However, this process cannot be seen as hegemonic or total since it is fragmented at various levels. On the level of state power, there is no uniform vision of the nation's history. Therefore, the book needed to accommodate its critics to a certain extent. Furthermore, there are institutional rules of history education that restrict a direct transmission of knowledge and promote teaching youths to develop their own views. And then there are the teachers, who have their part in shaping history.

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Following a subject-oriented approach, teachers predominantly focus on the students’ familial migration biographies in their teaching practice on the topic of migration. Even though the teachers are pretending an anti-racist debate based on fundamental rights, this approach tends to trigger and to reproduce hegemonic orders of belonging without reflection. The article deals with this discrepance of intension and practice and addresses the question of alternative approaches to critically dispute hegemonic orders of belonging in schools.

Rezension

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